Texas announces $250 million border wall down payment

Scientists found a dead Asian giant hornet north of Seattle, the first murder hornet found in the country this year. The 5-centimeter-long invasive insects are native to Asia and pose a threat to honeybees and native hornet species. While not particularly aggressive toward humans, their sting is extremely painful and repeated stings can kill. ’The find is perplexing,’ said USDA officials.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that the Capitol insurrection was a false flag orchestrated by the FBI in an effort to ’suppress political dissent.’ This is the latest attempt by Carlson in downplaying the riots, having previously insisted there was ’no insurrection’ and that it was only a ’political protest that got out of hand.’ Carlson pointed to some of the rioters as ’FBI operatives.’

Members of the Ohio House expelled Rep. Larry Householder, the federally indicted Republican ex-speaker, Wednesday in a bipartisan vote that invoked their powers to remove a member for the first time in 150 years.

A man accused of driving into a group of protesters in Minneapolis while he was drunk, killing one person, was charged Wednesday with intentional second-degree murder. Prosecutors say Nicholas Kraus, 35, was visibly intoxicated Sunday night when he sped up and tried to ’jump’ a car that was being used as a barricade by protesters. TDeona Knajdek, 31, was killed.

The CDC is expected to reclassify the highly contagious COVID-19 strain that emerged from India as a ’variant of concern.’ The so-called Delta strain, B1.617.2, will be listed by the agency as a ’variant of concern’ on Tuesday due to ’mounting evidence’ that it has a mutation that makes it more transmissible and causes more severe cases compared to other variants.

The US death toll from COVID-19 topped 600,000 on Tuesday, even as the vaccination drive has drastically brought down daily cases and fatalities. The milestone came the same day that California and New York lifted most of their remaining restrictions, joining other states. More than 50% of Americans have had at least one dose of vaccine, while over 40% are fully vaccinated.

A man accused of shooting and wounding five people in Alabama and Georgia told police his assaults were racially motivated, and he was targeting white men. Police detective testified in a preliminary hearing that Justin Tyran Roberts told police that white men had picked on him and wronged him for all his life. Police have accused Roberts of shooting five people in three separate assaults.

Achieving a narrow victory in a runoff vote against Mike Stone, Alabama pastor Ed Litton has become the Southern Baptist Convention’s newest president amidst a season of turmoil & theological tensions. Litton emphasized a new focus on race & diversity in the largest Protestant denomination in the US but the narrow vote & worldview disparities have led to many discussions of a possible split.

A North Korean defector said she viewed the US as country of free thought, until she went to college here. Yeonmi Park attended Columbia Univ and was immediately struck by what she viewed anti-Western sentiment in the classroom and a focus on political correctness. ’I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying,’ she added.

MacKenzie Scott, billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon CEO Bezos, announced Tuesday she has given away more than $2.7B to hundreds of groups this year. Scott said she donated to 286 ’high-impact organizations’ focused on a variety of causes, ranging from the arts and racial justice to higher education and combating domestic violence. Scott has a net worth of more than $59B.

Actress Lisa Banes has died 10 days after being injured in a hit-and-run accident in NYC. Banes, 65, was best known for playing Marybeth Elliott in Gone Girl, as well as Bonnie in the Tom Cruise film Cocktail. She had been receiving treatment at a hospital after suffering serious injuries in last week’s accident. Police have made no arrests.